The Victim
by Georgshadow
Summary: Pre-slash, horror. Seeing a murder for the first time worsens Jim's guilt.


Jim Reed was beginning to hate his wife.

Not the kind of burning, seething hatred a man could develop after 30 years of marriage. It was a kind of hate borne out of fear. Every day he could sense her getting quieter over dinner, her responses shorter, her glances more wary instead of adoring. Deep down inside, he knew the day was near when she would catch on to the fact that he talked about his patrol partner more than anyone else he'd ever known. Surely she could see, in the times she'd met the man, the way Jim would get dreamy and distracted around him. Surely she'd had her suspicions as long as she'd known her husband. Surely she knew. And for this, Jim was beginning to hate her.

One night on patrol, Jim tried to bring it up to his bachelor partner.

"She says she doesn't want to cook dinner for me," he began, not mentioning her name, knowing it wasn't necessary.

"Hmm?" Pete kept his eyes on the road, probably tired of listening to the tales of woe his married colleagues always spouted.

"She thinks there's no way I could be working up such an appetite sitting in a car all day. Not even driving." After a moment of thought, he derailed. "It bugs her that you always drive, too. She thinks you're on some kind of an ego trip."

"Sounds like the two of you have a lot of common ideas," the senior officer said dryly. Then, when Jim's stomach growled loud enough to be heard over the engine, he sighed and continued, "Why don't we take 7 and you can fill up before you get home."

"I'm fine," Jim pouted.

Pete snagged the mic and held it out to him, not even lifting his eyes from the road. "There's a taco joint there, ya see? Up ahead."

"I'll just have a TV dinner at home," the probationer mumbled.

"1-Adam-12 requesting code 7 at 8th and Market," Pete spoke into the receiver, his tone snippy enough that the dispatcher matched it when she okayed the request.

Jim made no protest when Pete turned the cruiser into the small lot beside the restaurant. It was a leftover from years ago, with a walk-up counter and cheap aluminum tables and chairs scattered out front. The table Jim selected as Pete sauntered up to the window was covered in graffiti and crude carvings. One marking said simply, "RJ was here," and he covered one leg of the R with a finger, smiling openly at the thought of "PJ." Their initials together. Sometimes upon seeing hand-carved graffiti he was almost moved enough to add his own—"JR + PM," perhaps circled in a heart like in the movies. But even as a kid he'd never had the audacity to deface property, and now that he was a real bonafied cop it was out of the question.

If Pete was trying to help get his mind off Jean, he'd already succeeded. His wife was the last thing on his mind as he looked up at Pete, who was leaning heavily on the counter and speaking softly to the pretty girl preparing his food. She was small and voluptuous with thick, wavy black hair. Probably all of about 18, Jim told himself, suddenly hating the girl as much as he hated his wife. Jealousy burned in him like frothing acid. It hadn't been the first time he'd longed to hear his enigmatic older partner use that hushed, drawling tone of voice on him instead. Even if he didn't have wavy black hair and gorgeous feminine curves, he couldn't keep from wishing that one day he'd get a once-over from a green lazy eye and a sleazy grin from crooked, freckled lips.

So much for "PJ." Jim folded his hands over the graffiti and sat quietly as Pete brought a heaping tray of food to the table.

"Alright, ya owe me about three bucks," Pete said, hiking up his gun belt over his belly, preparing himself for the swell of a heavy meal.

Despite his festering self-pity, the smell of the food drove Jim to tear off a paper wrapper and salivate at the thick sour cream, fresh cilantro and blood-red chili.

"I can see why you like this place," Jim finally croaked out between frantic gulps. Pretty waitresses and greasy food seemed to be Pete's top criteria when it came to restaurants. In his fascination with the man, he found himself keeping track of his preferences.

"Don't eat so fast," Pete said through a napkin. "You're gonna make yourself sick."

Jim ignored the warning and kept from spitting back "Yes, _sir_." He'd accepted that his training officer was going to give a lot of unsolicited advice, and he was learning to tune it out the same way Pete did with complaints about Jean.

When they'd finished the meal and cleared their table, Pete gave one last coy little wave at the girl behind the counter and they staggered back to the cruiser to finish their patrol.

"If we're lucky we'll have a slow night," Pete said as Jim cleared them. A moment later, the radio piped up with an unknown trouble call in their area.

"Malloy?" Jim started, hesitantly fingering the mic.

"Go ahead," Pete sighed, wringing his palms on the steering wheel and turning the car around to head to the given address.

Jim wondered if he should feel guilty as he acknowledged the call. 1-Adam-47 was probably close enough to take it, he figured, and he knew Pete was tired and overstuffed. But the meal and Pete's company had eased his mind. He suddenly felt a lot better than he had for a long time, and he wanted to justify his day's pay.

Pete would have taken the call anyway, he assured himself. He'd been around long enough to know that Pete didn't want a cop like Ed Wells rolling on an unknown trouble call, swinging his baton and whistling "Happy Trails," more concerned about showing off to the PR than finding out what was wrong.

They made their way in silence to the given address, a duplex built during the war and in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. A woman with a long bathrobe and gray hair in rag curlers was waiting for them with one hand clutching a burning cigarette, the other wrapped around her like a security blanket.

"I wasn't sure if I should call you boys," she said, speaking so fast her words rolled together all at once. "But that girl, oh she's the nicest girl…"

There was something looming in the air around them, Jim realized, stepping out of the car. A feeling that made his gut clench around his dinner. He'd felt it a few times before, and he'd come to recognize it already. He didn't want to recognize it. He hated it.

As Jim looked around and tried to make sense of the strange sensation, Pete was getting the woman to calm down and tell them what was going on.

"She came out here from Missouri and she was seeing a guy from one of those studios," she rattled on. "But then this sailor started coming around here and she got herself in trouble, if you know what I mean, and then the sailor took off as soon as he found out she was knocked up and she told me she was trying to get that actor to marry her. He's gonna be in the movies one day, she says. Gonna make her a lot of money."

Jim could feel the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. It was like a fog settling around them, a thickness in the air, pressing in close enough to touch.

"Well, then the other night that actor came over and I heard all this screaming. I'm not eavesdropping on my neighbors, mind you, it's just that the walls are paper-thin, that's all." She shoved a clump of hair that had come loose from its curler up her sweaty forehead. "I can hear almost everything that goes on in there."

"Yes ma'am," Pete prompted. His hands seemed to get cramped and he handed the notepad to Jim, wiping his palms on his thighs. Glancing quickly at Pete's notes, he could see that the writing was sloppy and slanted. Jim was sure his would be, too.

"Well, there was all this screaming and then it got quiet all at once and someone left. I didn't think anything of it, but see, she always comes out during the day to water the begonias, and then she always watches a late movie at night, and she didn't do either of those things."

Jim could hardly read his own notes. The sinking feeling got stronger, and stronger yet as Pete instructed the woman to go inside and stay there while they investigated. Side by side they wordlessly made their way to the door and Pete knocked hard with his baton.

"Police officers," he announced. There was no response. The lights were off and the house was still.

"We're gonna have to go in there." Jim gulped at the thought. "There's cause, isn't there?"

Pete nodded. He tried the lock and then stepped back.

"Kick it," he ordered grimly.

Seeing it done on TV made it seem more glamorous than it was. Jim leaned back and kicked the door hard, the sole of his shoe making a tremendous bang, rattling the frame and doing nothing to budge the door. His stomach lurched as he reeled back, his leg aching as he readied himself to kick it again.

"Lemme give it a shot," Pete tried. Jim obediently stepped back and watched Pete throw his larger weight into the door, sending splintered pieces of the frame spraying in every direction.

"Wow," Jim breathed, watching Pete shake it off like it was nothing.

"Ya loosened it up for me," Pete said reassuringly, although his voice was rough and stilted. As they peered into the darkened house, Jim could feel that awful feeling more than ever. Holding his flashlight in front of him, he could hardly get his fingers to work long enough to turn it on.

"Here goes," Pete sighed, leading the way, his flashlight casting a beam over upturned furniture and, as he lowered the light, a dark black smear along the floor.

Jim could feel his heartbeat echoing in his chest. It seemed so violently loud he wondered if Pete could hear it, too.

Keeping the beam trained on the floor, Pete went first, slowly following the smear through the front room and down the hall. Jim followed him, taking care to look at the stain only long enough to avoid stepping on it.

And then, as Pete rounded a corner in the hall, he stopped in his tracks and suddenly switched off his flashlight. Puzzled, Jim shone his light at Pete, his heart racing even faster at the older man's tightly closed eyes and pursed lips.

"Get the detectives out here," Pete said softly, his face seeming to get grey. "And the coroner."

At once Jim knew what it was. He knew why Pete had turned off his flashlight. In a split second he debated with himself whether to obey Pete without question, or whether to satisfy the morbid, animal curiosity that gnawed at him.

Before he could stop himself he turned his beam onto the floor where the trail ended.

The body was curled on up its side, facing them. The blood had dried and lost the glistening sheen of fresh wounds. The protruding, swollen stomach had been split in the middle like a ripe melon. Between the bent knees and elbows, gray intestines spilled wetly onto the carpet and surrounded a bulging mass, so thick with veins he wondered why it didn't throb.

"Get the detectives," Pete repeated.

Jim stared at the lump, frozen where he stood.

"Do as I say, goddamn it." There was no anger in Pete's voice. It was a wavering sadness instead, so choked-up his voice nearly cracked.

To hear the senior officer speak like that terrified Jim more than all the times he'd been yelled at and scolded. He turned away and scurried back down the hall, fearfully side-stepping the bloody trail, breaking into a sprint and bursting through the open door.

He hadn't seen the face. No blood-stained clothes. Only the mess hanging out of the body. Her body. It had been a person once.

_Two_ people. The thought struck him suddenly and he remembered the misshapen organ that seemed so out of place from the biology textbooks he'd hardly glanced at in school. All those veins… had one of the tiny bumps been an arm?

"Oh…" he couldn't fight the dizziness that seized him. All at once he could see the face on that body lying on the floor—it wasn't a stranger's body, but Jean's. She gazed accusingly at him with dry, sunken eyes, knowing the way he'd feared her and hated her. Knowing the way he'd pined after his patrol partner, imagined him in her place while she carried his unborn child.

The hard concrete bruised his knees as he fell, sliding against the cold metal door of the car. His nerves betrayed him and his stomach rejected the enormous dinner. He knelt on the ground and threw up the entire meal, all the coagulated sour cream and hot chili that singed his mouth and nose in its way back out. His eyes stung and he fought the tears that escaped him and rolled down his burning face.

A voice penetrated the nothingness surrounding him. "1-Adam-12 requesting detectives and coroner meet us at seven-sixty-three Lenora," it said. He didn't have to look to feel Pete standing behind him. When his guts were empty, he felt a big hand settle on the center of his back.

"The baby…" he choked around his vile, swollen tongue.

Pete said nothing and disappeared, for how long Jim couldn't tell. When he returned he replaced the steady hand on Jim's back and coaxed him to sit up.

"Here." The other hand held a tall glass of the most appetizing water Jim had ever seen. He wearily accepted the glass, which felt extraordinarily heavy and ice-cold against his fingertips. A sip of it soothed the fire in his throat and filled the aching void in his stomach.

Pete eased himself down on the sidewalk beside him, sitting on the curb upwind from Jim's vomit.

"This is your first homicide," Pete said softly. "Ya better get used to it, cuz it won't be your last."

Jim nodded tiredly. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."

The hand hadn't moved from his back, and it gave a tender pat. "I did the same thing when I saw my first DB and it was only a wino face-down in an alley." After some thought, he added, "Tell ya the truth, it never really gets easier."

Jim emptied the glass and held it in front of him, staring at his distorted reflection rather than turn to look at the man beside him. "Where'd you get this? From the neighbor?" He sniffled and rubbed the tender skin under his eyes.

"Yeah," Pete said, unbuttoning his breast pocket and producing a loosely-folded handkerchief. "Blow your nose, that'll help it stop burning."

Jim accepted the hanky as delicately as he'd taken the glass, blowing his nose into the center, reeling from a second wave of nausea upon seeing a hunk of cilantro on the white cotton.

"Were you thinking about Jean?" Pete asked, slowly. "I know I would."

Jean, oh how he hated the thought. He hated to think that Pete was right. He hated the guilt that overcame him again and again and again. He hated those dry, knowing eyes.

"You shouldn't have taken this," Jim held out the glass. "It's a gratuity, after all."

"Excuse me for looking out for ya," Pete grumbled and snatched up the glass. When Jim folded the handkerchief and held it out, he shook his head in disgust. "Keep it as a souvenir."

As Pete stood an unmarked Plymouth parked behind the cruiser. A siren wailed in the distance.

"Green, Anderson," Pete greeted the detectives as they stepped out.

"Coroner's on the way," one of them replied. "What's the situation?"

"Come on, I gotta bring this back to the neighbor," Pete shook the glass. "I'll tell ya on the way."

"Where's your partner?"

Jim stayed where he was, too ashamed to lift his face when he heard the detective understandingly say, "Rookie, huh?"

"Yup," Pete said. "Brand new. Not even housebroken yet."

Three pairs of feet began to walk away.

"Looked like a stabbing. It's a huge mess," Pete's voice was carried away into the night. "I covered her with a sheet, sorry about that. Couldn't stand to leave her there like that. Christ, she looked young."

Jim pulled up his knees and wrapped his arms around his legs, hugging them to himself. He felt his badge press into his chest, and he wondered if he'd ever make it through the night, and the next, and the next after that. _It'll never get easier,_ Jim repeated Pete's words to himself. _That's why there's two of us, because nobody could do it alone._

He held up the folded handkerchief to study it under the street lights. Still crisp and white on the outside, it had a delicately embroidered M on the corner.

"Malloy?" Jim guessed allowed. Maybe it was an heirloom. He'd have to give it back when he'd washed it.

Or maybe he would keep it after all. Unfolding it just enough to wipe his lips one last time, he shoved it into his pocket and stood up. He straightened his uniform and kept his gaze away from the vomit under the car, and he turned and followed his partner into the house.


End file.
